Teenage blood ‘no fountain of youth’

The US drugs regulator has “significant health concerns” about a craze for injections of blood from teenagers to older patients.

“There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions,” the FDA says.

The US drugs regulator has warned against a health craze in which people are injected with blood plasma from teenagers in the hope of slowing the ageing process and tackling degenerative diseases.

The Food and Drug Administration said it had “significant health concerns” about plasma transfusions offered by US clinics, which claim it can treat memory loss, tackle dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.

“There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions,” the FDA said.

Such practices are not cheap. A start-up firm in San Francisco called Ambrosia Medical charges $US8000 ($11,100) for transfusions of one litre of plasma.

The clinic bought surplus supplies from blood banks and separated out the plasma for its procedure. It had to mix blood from different donors to make up the amount required for each treatment. The clinic said this week that, “in compliance with the FDA announcement … we have ceased patient treatments”.

Jesse Karmazin, 34, a graduate of Stanford University medical school and the managing director and founder of Ambrosia, in 2017 said: “I really ­believe it reverses ageing.

“There’s a statistically significant improvement in organ function after one month and people do feel better.”

Another US start-up, Elevian, raised $US5.5 million last year to explore whether a blood protein called GDF11 was the key ­ingredient for prolonging life.

However, the FDA said treatments using plasma from young donors “have not gone through the rigorous testing the FDA normally requires in order to confirm the therapeutic benefit of a product and to ensure its safety”.

The technique behind injecting young blood plasma into older patients is based on investigations conducted on mice.

The studies involved sewing together the blood vessels of two mice, one old and one young, to merge their circulatory systems. The organs of the older mouse, including its heart, brain and muscles, were reinvigorated and its coat became shinier. Conversely, the blood of the old mice caused ill health in the young.

However, there is almost no scientific evidence to suggest the procedure works in humans.

The Times